Since May of this year it's online and perhaps for one or another scientist of interest. It's NOT a google-substitute (or for the google alternatives). The search engine answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might (from wikipedia]).

Or in their words:

"Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."

One must presume that long and short arguments contribute to the same end. - Epicurus...except casandra's that belong to the funniest, most interesting and imaginative (or over-imaginative?) ones, I suppose.